


The Greatest Grief

by thedevilyousay



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Husbands, It's so not permanent I'm not putting it in the Archive warnings, M/M, Not Permanent Major Character Death, hedgewitch stiles, mildly NSFW pic at end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 10:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3647712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilyousay/pseuds/thedevilyousay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Derek wakes up to the familiar touch of his husband, he has one moment of pure, unspoiled happiness before he remembers that Stiles died almost a year ago to the day. The ghost in his bed is just that: a ghost. Except for the one time it isn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greatest Grief

**Author's Note:**

> “Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.” 
> 
> I just really want to stomp on your heart before picking it up, dusting it off, and handing it back to you. Because that's what this idea did to me . This really does have a happy ending, don't be scared. Though I don't know if it turned out as sadly as I had intended. It was sure as hell sad to write.
> 
> WARNING: Mildly NSFW pic at the bottom. Seriously mild. But, I mean, you might not want it on your screen if someone who doesn't know what you get up to in your spare time walks by. It's up to you. This is just a complimentary warning. 
> 
> Also, sorry if my tenses get a little mixed up or confusing. I tried really hard to keep everything in order but you know. All mistakes are mine.

“Pssst…”

Derek wakes up slowly, in small, quiet increments that make his surroundings filter through in hazy pieces. He can hear the white noise of the fan he needs to sleep, a comforting hum in the peace of his bedroom. He can smell his own sheets, the smell most predominantly him with only the faintest scent of the last person to share it with him still clinging to the fabric. He can feel his hand where it’s rested under his cheek and against the pillow, the metal of a ring he still wears warmed by his own skin. Everything is just as he had left it before he went to bed except for the feather light touch ghosting across his eyebrows and down the bridge of his nose, a repetitive, familiar petting that has him squeezing his eyes closed so tight he can see flashes of stars behind his eyelids. 

“Hello, wolf.”

He doesn’t dare move or breath. The rubbing continues anyway, a gentle caress that begins to drag the tears squeezing from his eyes across his cheeks and steadily down his nose. He wonders at the power of his imagination, at how strong the sense memory of his dead husband waking him up still remains in his conscious. With his eyes still closed, he can picture the sweet smile that would be waiting for him when he finally peeked, honey brown eyes practically glowing with mirth and warmth as he would patiently guide Derek awake.

Derek can recall in vivid detail the very first morning he had woken up to Stiles careful touch, just as soft now as it had been then. They had only known each other for a year at the time and it would be several more before their orbits would collide so hard that eventually it would be difficult to tell where one started and the other ended. But that particular morning Stiles was still just seventeen and Derek hadn’t been touched that sweetly in so long that he had waited a whole five minutes after waking up to actually open his eyes and startle the boy off the other side of the bed. 

“Shit!” he had yelled, his body hitting the floor with a loud thump. Derek had watched as he gathered himself enough to pop just the top half of his face back above the edge of the bed, his glance wary and anxious.

“Uh, morning! I am so sorry, I did not mean to wake you with my bad touch, I promise it will never happen again. We don’t even have to talk about it it’s so far in the past already of things that happened only once and will never occur ever again.” 

Derek had had to resist the urge to smile, instead sitting up in the bed only to feel a clench in his stomach that quickly let him know why he’d been laying down in the first place. 

“Wait! No, lay back down! Sorry! Just lay back down, ok? You’re still healing and I only learned how to make stitches like two weeks ago, I would not swear on them to keep your guts in. Please don’t move.” Stiles had scrambled up from the floor and back onto the bed faster than Derek had assumed he could move, his hands falling to Derek’s shoulders where he helped ease him back into the sheets.

“What happened?” he growled.

“You don’t remember? Fuck, do you know what today is? Do you know who I am?” Stiles had reeled back away from him again, his hands now held out in front of him in a placating gesture. 

“Calm down, Stiles, I know who you are. I just don’t recall why I’m not healing fast enough to not need stitches.” Derek eased back on to his side, a mirror of the position he’d been in while he was still sleeping. 

“Oh, it was a witch. The spell she hit you with is still active but we’re working on a way to reverse it. The others just left to go pick up a book from Deaton, I stayed to make sure none of you rolled around too much in your sleep.” Around the time he mentioned it, Derek realized he could hear the even breaths of Erica and Isaac in the living room, obviously still recovering like him. He’d nodded his acknowledgement. 

“I’ll just be going, then cause you’re okay, right?” Stiles rocked back to his feet and edged towards the door, obviously wanting to get away now that Derek could see to himself. He was halfway out, not waiting for a real answer before he backtracked suddenly. 

“One more thing!” 

Derek admired his ability to fling himself around a room as he ran back in towards the dresser and snatched a vial of something green off the top of it. He brought it into reaching range and held it out expectantly. Derek grabbed it from him, his nose tickling at the strong smell, overpowering from its new lack of distance. 

“What is this?” 

Stiles whole face had lit up in excitement as he exclaimed, “I made it! It’s helping your wounds stay closed, actually. You need to rub it around on your stomach every hour on the hour or else the spell will rip the stitches and you’ll start bleeding again.” As Derek peered down at himself, he noticed the green ooze pasted across his abdominals already. He resisted the urge to scratch it off now that he knew it was there.

“You need to apply it in exactly ten minutes, okay? I set an alarm on your phone so you’ll know. Scott and Lydia should be back before we run out.” And with that he had gone, probably to check on the sleeping Betas in the other room.

Derek lets the memory wash over him, a small smile twisting his lips as he recalls the first of many concoctions that Stiles would make to keep him and the others alive. It would be a few months after that incident before they would learn the term “hedgewitch” and Stiles would take to it like he’d been doing it his whole life. The scent still lingering in their bed holds remnants of the fresh turned earth and ozone that had so thoroughly worked its way into his skin over those years.

It’s with a sluggish awareness that Derek realizes the light petting down his nose is still happening. It surprises him only a little, knowing that when Stiles had been alive he could and would do it for hours sometimes, the sensation so common and comforting that Derek has no trouble believing it’s imprinted on his brain so permanently. He hastily falls in fatal love with the ghost of it and still refuses to open his eyes lest he break the spell. A few more tears sneak past his eyelids. 

“Hey, big guy, don’t cry. Oh, please don’t cry.”

It’s another sentence straight from his recollection, the feelings associated with it still sharp and bright. It had happened right before they’d gotten engaged, only a few years ago in reality. They were actually broken up at the time, had been together for four years already before Stiles had gone out and gotten himself injured because of Derek and Derek had ended their relationship in a fit of panic. 

“Get out. Take your plants and your clothes and your everything and leave, Stiles.” He had snarled. 

“No. You’re being ridiculous, Derek. You’re overreacting. I’m not sorry I stepped in and I’m not sorry I saved you but I am sorry I didn’t tell you what was going on and undermined you. But I didn’t have a choice. If I had shown my hand or you had reacted like you knew then it would have all fallen apart. That poison would have killed you if I hadn’t drank it first.” 

“But you almost died instead! Our treaty with the hunters is not worth your life, Stiles! I can’t do this anymore. You always act before you think and I am not going to be left here with nothing when it finally gets the best of you. I’m out.” Derek finished zipping the bag he’d been furiously packing for Stiles and set it by the door where he’d already placed a few of his other things, things he knew he’d need before they could move the rest of his stuff out. He went to grab Stiles’ pillow, the last of his necessities and the one thing he couldn’t sleep without off the side of the bed but Stiles moved faster and snatched it out of his reach, his eyes watery as he hugged it to himself. 

“Derek, please. Please don’t do this. You’re really just going to give up the last four years of your life, happy years, Derek, because of a little misunderstanding? You’re just going to give me up? Just like that?” 

Derek can remember the feeling of blood dripping from his palms as he had clenched his fists so tight his claws were digging into his skin. He’d stared at their bed, the new wrongness of it without Stiles pillow a painful eyesore but he hadn’t dared to look up at Stiles instead. He knew his resolve would melt. It would melt and he would stay in this relationship that was sure to break his heart irrevocably this time. There would be no coming back from something happening to the last and only thing in his life he cared about and his self-preservation instincts were screaming at him. Best to cut ties now, before the inevitable. At least by the time Stiles was eighty and declining because of natural causes Derek would have had enough time to cope with the idea of a world without him. 

“Just go, Stiles. Please. Get out.” 

By the time Derek had looked up, hours later, the other side of the room and his life was empty. He had crawled into bed and stayed there for two straight weeks. Different pack members had dropped by to force feed him and roll him over but otherwise he’d grieved in relative solitude. 

It was the third week that found him waking almost exactly like he had tonight. He’d been deeply asleep with the covers pulled over his head before a precious sensation had had him gasping awake. Stiles, smelling heavily of alcohol and misery had lain across from him under the blanket too, his gentle touch not stopping as Derek’s eyes focused in the dark with just barely enough light to see with. There were tears rolling down his face and his hand was shaking but Derek might as well have gone blind in his absence in comparison to the color suddenly relighting his world at the sight.

“I’m sorry, Der, I can’t do it. I tried but I can’t and you can’t make me. It’s you and me, it’s always been just you and me and I don’t ever want to leave again. ‘Cause I will just find my way back. I will always find my way back. You can take my house key, my car, my shoes, I don’t fucking care, I will come back to you. Please let me stay.”

Tears had slipped from Derek’s eyes then too as he had grabbed his soon to be fiancé so hard it knocked the breath out of him. He’d buried his face in Stiles neck and breathed in home and swore he’d never do this to them again.

“Hey, big guy, don’t cry. Oh, please don’t cry. I’m here.” Stiles had whispered it until Derek believed it. He had always been able to make Derek believe the impossible. Yet, in retrospect, it was Derek who had been right after all because Stiles did eventually leave, in the worst and most permanent of ways. 

He’d known then and he knew it now that keeping Stiles would come with a cost. Because he was cursed. He was cursed to have everything he had ever loved cruelly and prematurely stolen from him until he learned his lesson. He doesn’t know what he did in a past life to have earned such a curse but he knows he’s sorry for it. If his sorrow could reach across centuries and time lost in an attempt to repair whatever damage he’d done it would have done so already. 

Because Stiles may have been the one to die but it was Derek who was left not living. 

He sighs exhaustedly into his pillow as the memory fades, moves his hand underneath it instead, rubbing his face along its edge to wipe off some of the wetness on his cheeks. The ghost hand had moved away long enough to allow him to readjust but restarts its ministrations as soon as he he’s settled. He’s happy for it, despite the literal, physical, renewed heartbreak he can feel caving in his chest. He had learned that first time that anything was always better than nothing. If all he could have were his memories and a persistent ghost he would cherish them just as much as he had the living version of his late husband, as much as he could. 

Against his will, his body unavoidably begins to relax back into the familiar caress, the monotonous motion lulling him tenderly back to sleep. He has to be at work in the morning anyway and the Sheriff never appreciates it when he’s late, despite his resistance to actually call him out on it. Derek really hates disappointing him. 

“Ok, fine. Go back to sleep, sourwolf. But I’ll still be here in the morning.” Oh, how he wishes that were true, but the habitual huff and puff of the statement makes him smile despite the unfamiliar words. He can’t recall the exact instance before when Stiles had said such a thing but it doesn’t really matter. He’s already accepted that his imagination is on another level and spares a brief moment of gratitude for small favors.

The morning finds him snuffling into a bird’s nest of dirty hair, the person’s head tucked tightly under his chin and the smell of freshly turned dirt making his nose itch. He pulls the body in tighter to him anyway, their hips aligning and their legs tangling pleasantly, a hitch in the soft snoring against his chest a beloved sound. Derek is making a rumbling noise of content in his throat and drifting back off before he remembers the person he’s holding _died_ in sudden and startling clarity. 

In fact, it’s been a year almost to the day that Derek had buried his young husband right next to his mother and he can still hear the sound of the dirt hitting the coffin, that unforgettable noise that had ushered in the finality of the whole situation, if he tries. When he pulls back enough to see the face smashed into his chest, he’s met with the long lashes above a freckled, upturned nose and smacking lips that has haunted him since that first day he saw them out in the woods. 

He’s sobbing before he notices it, loud, heartbreaking noises that he has made only one other time in his life. Stiles, or at least whatever this is that looks like him, startles awake, his arms almost instinctively wrapping around the man in front of him.

“Wha?? Whas wrong, Der? Baby, shhh, don’t cry, wolf, don’t cry.” 

Erica, Boyd, and Isaac are bursting into the room a second later, half transformed and ready to fight. Erica is the first to realize what’s going on, a high pitched whine ripped from her throat before she’s jumping on the bed to wrap herself around her alpha and his mate. Her own sobs hit the air right around the time Boyd sits heavily on the floor in shock and Isaac is some how calmly dialing his phone.

“Scott, you’re going to want to get here now. Like, now. Hurry.” And then he hangs up and sits down next to Boyd, wiping hastily at his own eyes. 

It takes hours for everyone to calm down, even longer for Stiles to convince them he’s real. Lydia splashes him with holy water and demands to take his pulse before she’s crawling into his lap and hiding her face in his neck to cry, the dirt still clinging to him from his grave not an issue. Allison has to physically drag Scott away when it gets dark, everyone refusing to leave the actual premise despite being kicked out of the bedroom.

And in all that time Derek had remained silent, a rock at Stiles’ back with puffy eyes and strong arms looped around his waist.

It isn’t until later that night, in the dark comfort of their bedroom that Derek can finally speak. They’re back in the position they woke up in mostly, except Stiles is bent far enough back to be able to rub Derek’s face, a cool index finger stroking the strong bridge of his nose over and over and over again adoringly. 

“I don’t understand.” Is what he finally breathes, his voice so soft Stiles barely hears him. But a brilliant, wicked smile breaks over the witch’s face as he decides his answer and Derek feels it in the cavity that was his chest, suddenly warm and bright and filling up again. 

“What is there to understand? The earth gave me back, I made it. I tamed the Nemeton and used its power to put myself back together. I told you I’d always find my way back, Der. I would tunnel up from hell on willpower alone if it meant returning to you. I’m that kind of in love with you, big guy, and you’d be remiss to forget it.” 

Derek’s own answering smile is blinding. He’s whispering words like “me too” and “love, god, I love you too” and then they’re kissing like they never stopped, a years worth of time to steal back with their eagerness. Because in the end, Derek doesn’t know what he did in a past life to be so cursed. But fuck if he wouldn’t do it all again.

**Author's Note:**

> Are you here? Did you make it? Did I complete my quest? Yell at me in the comments or here on [ tumblr. ](http://www.witchspark.tumblr.com)


End file.
